Tag Archives: Martin Latta

I hear drums. Drums in space.

The blackness of space. Drums that become louder. Pan down, a massive angular spaceship hovers above a planet covered in city lights. These images and sounds make a very strong first impression of a movie. It sets the tone of Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith, and many of us associate that opening shot to the angular Venator-class Star Destroyer. Martin Latta spent two years building a massive and accurate LEGO model of this beautiful ship. He painstakingly recreated every small detail he could find on the original studio miniature model, bringing his build to be over a meter long and consisting of 11103 pieces.

Vigilance - Venator-class Star Destroyer

Not only did Martin nail the complex angles of this ship with clever layers of tiles and panels, he also threw used the shapes of LEGO pieces to create textures on an otherwise smooth hull. Dark red highlights break up the typical grey of this Star Wars vessel, and the brick-built Open Circle Fleet insignia brings a splash of an additional colour. What I consider the icing on the cake: the top red hull paneling splits open to reveal a hangar, from which Anakin and Obi-Wan’s starfighters take off to partake in the Battle of Coruscant.

Vigilance - Venator class-star destroyer

Check out Martin’s Flickr album for more shots of this behemoth, as well as work in progress pictures!

A warren for the Weasleys, built of more than bricks

This amazing LEGO family home for the Weasleys has been beautifully constructed out of approximately 5000 bricks by the talented team of Martin Latta and Camille Jongy. The Burrow, as its fondly called, is a magical masterpiece of constructed quandaries. This rendition pays excellent homage to the fictional homestead found on the outskirts of Ottery St. Catchpole in Devon, England. It’s the texture work here that really does it for me. The meshing of vertical and horizontal sections throughout gives an unmistakable feeling of the hodge-podge expansion of their family home. Presumably held together by assorted masonry, magic and carpentry, the colour palette used over this impressive build is marvelously apt. The earthy tones and techniques involved in texturing the Burrow are only one side to a plethora of perspectives through you could look at it.

The Burrow

Click here to see more of this magical homestead

R2-D2 vs the Buzz Droids

Remember that one annoying thing from the Star Wars prequel movies? No, I don’t mean that. And no, not that either. No, no, not that! I’m thinking about the Pistoeka sabotage droids also known as Buzz Droids. I mean, who would have thunk there could be these bots that can cling to a starship like a parasite and slice the important bits out of it? That is just scary stuff right there! Luckily R2-D2 was a smart little droid with a good solution to a pest control problem. He just zapped them into oblivion! Martin Latta illustrates this point nicely with some stunning photography. The blurred Venator-class Star Destroyers in the distance are an excellent touch.

R2-D2 vs. buzz droid

If you could build anything in the world...

Apparently, Martin Latta could not choose between all the amazing things on Earth to build out of LEGO, so he just built all of them, in a really tiny scale. Can you pinpoint the exact brick on which you live? I have found mine!

The Earth

The build is based on Bram’s Sphere Generator, a free online tool anyone can use to generate instructions for a LEGO sphere of any diameter (Martin’s Earth has a radius of 14 studs). The builder adds a lot of his own flare to the creation with different colours and textures used for different regions of the world – from dark green as vanishing rainforests to white as vanishing glaciers. Stay tuned for our 2075 article when we will feature a new globe made of all tan and grey colours!